Water
by redex
Summary: SR. They're both too broken to go back to being what they were before. Just trying to live is hard enough. [oneshot]


Written for yesterday, but technically it's todays as I finished it at 12:30 last night. (I'm just saying that becuase I don't feel in a very writerly mood). This one's length makes up for the other two's shortness. I was sure I had written something similar to this before, but I couldn't find it uploaded on here, so whatever. P: Have fun with the puppy-love.

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**Water**

**_by_**

**Redex**

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Remus nearly jumped out of his skin when someone knocked on his door that night.

It wasn't often that people visited his house, unannounced, in the middle of the night, during thunderstorms.

If it wasn't the overgrown grass in the front (he liked it longer better), the chipping paint (no time or money), the broken shutters (they added charector), or the overgrown gated path, it was the screaming and houling that visited once a month that scared off any overly curious people, muggle or otherwise.

Despite that, Remus still went upstairs to look down from one of the windows to see who it was before unlocking the door.

The moment he saw the hippogriff shivering under a nearby tree, lit by lightning, he ran down the stairs and swore at the ancient lock untill it opened.

"Bugger, damn, shit..."

"Remus. Nice to see you too."

Remus noticed how the skin crinkled around Sirius' eyes when he smiled, and stayed there. That had never been there before.

Remus found himself acting like the shy boy he had been so long ago, before Sirius, and he was reminded of their regression.

He scratched the back of his head, his long silence.

"Aaah, not you, the lock just doesn't..."

He gave it up when he realized he still hadn't invited Sirius in.

"God you're wet..." Remus murmured, rushing around trying to find a towel. When he was rummaging around in the bathroom, he realized that a bath might be easier.

Sirius stuck his head in the door, startling Remus out of his stunned, blushing rememberance of Sirius. A young Sirius. The Sirius in the door had his shirt off, but Remus could see his ribs, and his hair fell down longer than his shoulders, matted and tangled.

"Sirius, have a bath, I'm going to go make you some food," Remus resolved, already going through the groceries he had bought a few days back. Hopefully he would have enough. Stew, maybe.

Sirius grinned wolfishly at the mention of food, and stepped onto the cracked tialed floor.

"You know, I was just waiting for you to offer, my dear Moony. I've been flying for the past two days, and that rain is bloody cold."

"Sorry," Remus apologized automaticly, passing Sirius the towel he had finally found. He felt bad letting Sirius see him in such ruin for a moment before he reminded himself that Sirius had just spent the past twelve years in jail and the year after that in hiding as a dog outside Hogworts.

And then he realized Sirius was staring at him, waiting for him to leave.

"Ah, right, sorry..."

He slipped out and shut the door behind him, hearing the water start running into the old claw-footed bath.

He slowly creaked down the stairs and listened to the rain and wind banging the shutters against the house.

Sirius was here. In his home. For how long? Not that it mattered. Remus would keep him here as long as it was safe, he knew. He had only just gotten used to the idea that Sirius was back, was... what? What was he, now? He certainly still had that ability to make Remus as nervious as a schoolgirl, and yet... He glowed inside at the knowlege that Sirius was here. Could he dare to hope that Sirius would stay? Did he really want to go through that pain again?

That final thought lingered in his mind as he directed two knives chopping celery and carrots while he peeled potatoes, most of them having gone to seed. He hoped Sirius wouldn't be able to taste them in the warm broth of the soup.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, fiddling with a knife and remembering all those nights after Sirius' arrest, that willingness to die inside, just to let the wolf take over. Something had always stopped him from giving way completely, but it had always been there, in the back of his mind. Sirius called down to him from the bathroom.

"Remus?"

His voice sounded rough, worn, as if he had spent all his time in the Remus-less life before this one screaming and crying. He probably had, Remus reminded himself as he mounted the stairs quietly. Years before, in the years before the Sirius-less years, Remus would have called up to Sirius before going up, teasing him about whether or not the desire to see him had anything to do with sex.

Now, they both were quiet, voices worn.

When Remus got up to the top of the stairs, the bathroom door was shut again. He knocked before opening it. The room was steaming, and Sirius was back in the bath, holding a pair of sissors. Remus' heart skipped a beat before Sirius spoke and corrected his fears.

"Remus..." he murmured, holding out the sissors to him with a pleading look in his eyes, begging him to come closer, within touching range. They hadn't touched yet, Remus realized with a shock. They had touched so much before, and then after that incident they never touched anyone, either of them, and now...

"I want you to cut it for me," Sirius murmured, pulling the sopping mess of hair out of the bath tub, holding it in one battered fist. "I can't even wash it, it's so disgusting..."

He was trying to make it sound light and casual, but it was broken by the shining of tears in his eyes. IMake it go away/i they pleaded.

Remus couldn't say no.

He touched Sirius on the forehead, carefully drawing back his head to rest on the edge of the tub. The hair fell nearly to the ground, and Remus smoothed it out, trying to get a mesure of an even line to cut across before giving up.

iAnything you can give is good enough for him/i he reminded himself.

And so the shears went gently, snipping away at Sirius' residue of pain untill they all dropped to the floor. Remus then set down the sissors and picked up an old brush off the counter, without getting up off his stool. He gently ran his fingers through, starting at the roots, and working his way down to the neatly cut ends. Then he brushed it out as well as he could, feeling the old familiar silkiness return a little.

When he stood up again, Sirius was crying.

Remus could count how many times Sirius had cried in front of him on one hand. They had all been very good reasons to cry.

"It's all gone now. You can wash it away," he murmured, heart-stricken.

All he could think of doing at the sight of that lost face was to bend down and kiss Sirius' gasping lips, the first kiss since that incident.

Conceding defeat, victory in a kind of loss, his walls fell and he drew up to cup Sirius' upside-down face and brush at his cheeks and half-beard with his thumbs. They stared at each other for a while.

Years ago, they would have had sex right there, in the bath. But now, now they just went downstairs silently and ate.

Sirius went back out into the rain for a moment, under an umbrella, to bring Buckbeak inside. Remus lead him through a back door into his basement, where he spent his full moons. Sirius looked mournfully at the heavy slash marks on the walls and the barred windows and Remus almost heard a wimper.

"I should have been here," Sirius whispered as Buckbeak trotted around in a circle and settled in.

Remus look at him, exausted, and smiled sadly.

"Don't do that to yourself, Sirius."

And then they went back upstairs and Remus couldn't think of anything to do but go to bed. Sirius had forgotten that it was the middle of the night, and what that meant to most people. He apologized all the way up to the only bedroom on the second floor. Remus got Sirius into some of his pijamas, marvelling at the fact that they actually fit when he was so gaunt to begin with, and pulled on some of his own, forgetting in his need for sleep the embarressment of before. Sirius stood and stared at him as he crawled into bed, pulling down the covers neatly by habit.

"Remus, I..." he lay one hand on the covers, and yet looked away.

"Just come here," Remus sighed, holding one arm out.

There was no sex. No apologies or admissals of things left unsaid. They just lay there, listening to each other's heartbeat under the white noise of the storm around them. This was all that was left to them.

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Comment? Critique! 


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